It can be scary to think about our children being soldiers in a war, but it’s our reality as believers. We are all in a war. Our thoughts are extremely important. What we think becomes our beliefs and our beliefs become our words and actions.
“Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” Matthew 12:34b
What we believe and think is important to God. If anything is important enough for God to care about it, the enemy wants to taint and destroy that thing.
He plants ideas and thoughts all around us in this world. “You would be more beautiful if you wore this…” “This protein powder will grow your muscles bigger.” “People only like smiles that are white.” And on and on we go.
The enemy puts distractions in our paths like the poppies in Wizard of Oz. He’d like to lull us to sleep so we aren’t effective in showing and telling the truth of Jesus’ love. He wants us to believe it’s someone else’s job to spiritually train our children. “Isn’t that what we pay the pastor and children’s pastor for?” That thinking goes against Deuteronomy 6:4-6. He wants US to talk with our children about the truths of God wherever we go, whatever we’re doing. Our pastors and children’s pastors are feeding our children vitamins to supplement the meals we’re supposed to be feeding them.
The enemy plants seeds of doubt in our minds to make us silent, “I really don’t know that much about Scripture. I don’t want to teach my children something incorrect, so I’ll just leave it to the professionals.” “I don’t want to bore my children or make them feel I’m pushing my faith on them, so I’ll just let them find ‘religion’ on their own.”
We are responsible to teach our children the truths of the faith. We also must be mindful to identify these kinds of lies and take them captive to make it obedient to Christ.
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5
What are the lies that you have believed about your children’s spiritual training?
What are steps you can take from this 4-blog series to fight for your children’s spiritual growth and help them become equipped for the spiritual battles they face?